


Feed the Rich (And Fuck The Poor)

by mademoisellePlume



Category: Motorcity
Genre: Gen, POV First Person, Stream of Consciousness, abraham kane is a POS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 09:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10659522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mademoisellePlume/pseuds/mademoisellePlume
Summary: Abraham Kane founded KaneCo, built a city of the future over the trash of yesterday, and has worked to preserve his vision. He knows he's a force for good, and that he's leaving his daughter something solid and safe to lead when he's gone. Once he's finished solving the Motorcity problem, anyways.





	Feed the Rich (And Fuck The Poor)

She just doesn’t understand. All her talk about the citizens of that filthy dump, about showing mercy, giving them a chance.

I suppose in a way I should be glad.

I wanted to give her a tame world, one that wouldn’t come crashing down at any moment like the one I grew up in. I wanted Julie to never know what it was like to watch the world burn and only be able to save a small corner of it. And now she’s come of age in a bleached and clean world and doesn’t understand why you can’t show weaknesses to rabid dogs.

She will learn better eventually, just not as harshly as I once did. Someone, somewhere, will show her the darker side of humanity, the depths that someone can reach and still think they’re right. And then she’ll understand me better.

I can change the world for her, I can hide her from my enemies, I can wrap her in a safety suit, but it’s the people that make life hurt. That’s not something I can protect her from without making her miserable.

So I’ll let her ask me about taking pity on the scum in the sewers as if they didn’t defy and betray me just by living where they do. I’ll brush it off and ignore it. One day she’ll know better.

For now though, despite her intensity and intelligence, she’s charmingly naive. I don’t know how she thinks we’d eradicate everything that Detroit used to be without some force. It should be a victimless act, but some people just can’t be helped.

There’s a place for everyone in Detroit Deluxe. Even Chilton.

Now, that place might be the execution block, but if he would just do the right thing and surrender, we could maybe find some drudge work to do once he’s been suitably reeducated.

It’s such a shame- he had such promise as a cadet. The poison that entered his mind when he descended into the depths is endemic of Motorcity. 

Live fast, live free! Pfaugh. 

Live fast is true enough. Their dangerous machines, their defiance of KaneCo, their filthy food out of the dirt, and mutant rats running their streets and streaking the ground with green piss. It all adds up to a pathetically short life. 

I do wonder what freedom they think they have.

Do they have the freedom to be clean? The freedom of medical care? The freedom to buy the newest technology? What about knowing what to do with your life, being told how best to help society? Do they think freedom is indulging primitive urges or driving their depraved cars?

I despair, sometimes, of what’s been done to the youth in Motorcity. To be so misled to not understand that true freedom is exercised in a proper society. Not devolving into gangs jockeying for territory and resources. 

We’ll teach them better, eventually. The Burners can only hold out so long. Mike Chilton doesn’t have the strength of character needed to really lead them to any meaningful victory. He doesn’t have what it takes to make the hard decisions.

He’s been faced with reality and flinched from it. He fled from a simple task. You don’t escort cockroaches out of a building, you just knock it down and watch most of them escape. But I suppose he’s learning more about cockroaches now, living in the filth down below.

There is a lot left in the remnants of the old world in and around Motorcity. Things Detroit Deluxe has left behind. Vaccinations are rarer down there, and not consistently given. Pests are allowed to run rampant, and I don’t just mean the Burners. 

It’s a tragic miracle that a plague hasn’t developed and solved the problem for me, really.

All the resources are up here.

They scrabble what they can from ruins, garbage dumps, and the dirt. Their piecemeal lives are what we’ve abandoned, and they try and act like there’s something worthwhile in that. Like these parasites can be proud of living off of trash.

It’s important that we make sure that Deluxians are aware of what fate befalls those that fall away from our glory in some misguided desire to “escape.” KaneCo makes sure to educate the public on the horrors of living off garbage, ancient living quarters fought over by a desperate populace, how groups of insufferable adolescents fill the so-called streets of Motorcity with weaponry and danger and make sure to remind them that in Deluxe, everyone has enough. Enough to eat, enough to wear, enough to do, and enough time to sleep, work, and be a productive citizen.

The city can all agree that there is nothing worth the horrors described.

Perhaps I should make sure Julie has been familiarized with our past. Then she can see how we’ve quite literally risen above the worst of ourselves. 

With myself at the helm of KaneCo and KaneCo leading Detroit, we have surpassed all expectations. We’ve built something beautiful out of the ashes of history. A world collapsing in on itself led us to ruin, and then I founded utopia.

The sheer magnitude of that escapes her - most young people, I think. To them, the world’s always been this way. There have always been buildings in the sky, there’s always been clean water to drink, and the thought of true warfare - of nuclear armaments and the ever-present possibility of total annihilation - was unthinkable. Even in the cesspool under Deluxe, they think they’re skirmishes with me is war. They think the loss of some of them when I’m pushing the rats up into the light is some sort of horrible tragedy. 

They don’t know how much they’ve benefited from my work. They must not, otherwise how could they be so ungrateful?

Of course, even people who should know better fall into the same foolish trap of thinking. There have been scientists that make the long fall from grace into Motorcity. Jacob set the precedent there, the fool.

I wonder if he regrets it? Regrets leaving me and everything that Deluxe could be? 

Well, I know the answer. He always was stubborn.

No matter. He made his contribution, and all his taciturn rebellion has netted him is anonymity in the annals of history and eking out a mean little existence in the hell down below.

I know he’s helping the Burners. I can see his influence on their tech, on their stinking, polluting cars.

I wish I could be surprised that the man who once taught my Julie to knit (before I had fibrous materials rationed) would be so actively working against her future. But then, he made his priorities clear when he objected to how I intended to clean out the underside of Detroit.

Just like Chilton. All the scum are really cut from the same cloth.

I know I’ll succeed. It’s inevitable. I’ll crush Chilton, I’ll burn out Motorcity, and I’ll finally have Detroit brought up to proper standards. All this little war is accomplishing is making me angrier and putting off my moment of victory.

I can’t lose. I have the resources, the manpower, the most intelligent people left on this ruined planet, and I have the most powerful motivation anyone can have.

After all, I need to leave this place better than I found it. For my daughter, and the golden line of Kane that she will continue into the future when I’m gone.


End file.
